7/27/2019 The Tablet 27 July 2013

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Fasting and faith

BRENDAN McCARTHY

Spiritual hungerFrom this holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims are required to refrain from food and drinkduring daylight hours, to Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays, fasting has long had religiousconnections. Could even the fashionable 5:2 fasting diet have such a dimension?

Its lunchtime. But today I am trying notto eat. Can I make it to evening withouta bite? Better one half-decent meal laterthan breaking the day with two flimsy

snacks? Im peckish, a little on edge, and havethe beginnings of a headache. Whatever Idecide, I cant have more than 600 caloriesbetween now and breakfast time tomorrow.Maybe a satsuma and a black coffee? A fewvine tomatoes, a piece of lettuce and a cracker?Surely this cant add up to more than 100calories? I go and check the food tables onmy iPad.

Im on the so-called 5:2 Diet, wildly popularsince Dr Michael Mosleys documentary Eat,Fast and Live Longer for BBC2s scienceseries Horizon. The rules are attractivelysimple. For two days a week you stick to 500calories if you are a woman, 600 for a man.On the other five days you forget about dieting

and eat as you normally do. The promisedrewards are huge: weight loss; fall in choles-terol; reduced risk of cancer, diabetes andAlzheimers; and increased life expectancy.During Americas Great Depression whenpeople ate less, life expectancy greatlyincreased. And in the Catholic world theressome evidence that monks and nuns (whopresumably eat more simply than most) out-live the general population.

In our family the 5:2 Diet, for whose benefitsthere is decent scientific evidence, has becomethe new kosher. I fast on Mondays andThursdays. Suzie, my wife, more determinedthan me, fasts on three or even four days aweek. In this she is truer to the spirit of thescience used to justify the diet; that alterna-tive-day fasting (and not just on two days aweek) has radical and long-lasting benefits.

On what days will I fast? Those on whichI am busiest and least likely to think aboutfood, Ive decided. Not since my childhoodhas fasting been such a prominent part of mylandscape. I am of an age to remember theold catechism answer about the conditionsfor receiving Communion: We must be inthe state of grace, be fasting from midnight,and have the right intention. Catholic life atthe time was choreographed around this hard

condition. People received Communion atearly Masses only (if they did at all).Newlyweds (my parents among them)married in the mornings and went with theirguests to a wedding breakfast. The fast wasan added practical incentive to attend

Midnight Mass at Christmas and Easter ratherthan wait for the morning.

Ive been on the diet for 10 weeks or so andI am losing weight (although not yet where Iwould most like). Already Ive realised thatI am putting my body through a harsher regimethan the Church ever demands on a fast day.Good Friday would be a doddle after this.And it doesnt begin to compare with IslamsRamadan fast (no food or drink from sunriseto sunset; harsh in these northerly latitudes 16 hours every day this week in London andalmost an hour longer in Scotland). My wifehelpfully suggested to a Muslim colleague atwork that it was the perfect time for her tostart the 5:2. She got a dusty answer.

Over the years, Ive mostly done as theChurch asked on fast days and I follow the

English bishops request that Catholics noteat meat on Fridays. Last Sunday over coffeeafter Mass, several of my friends and I dis-cussed Friday abstinence; we agreed that itwas largely meaningless to us and a failedattempt at Catholic identity politics. Of courseFriday abstinence in the Catholic worldtends to be rendered as fish on Fridays. WhenI was growing up in West Clare, this oftenmeant my grandfather arriving home with asalmon or sea bass (or even a lobster) caughtthat morning. The bishops statement at thetime of the reintroduction of the Friday obli-

gation remarked that the best habits arethose which are acquired as part of a commonresolve and common witness. This ignoredsome basic realities of modern weekday eating;that its less a matter of common witnessthan of serial grazing.

In reality, fast and abstinence are not veryrigorous in the Catholic tradition. To a deter-mined dieter, the online Catholic

Encyclopaedias entry on fasting reads as pos-itively lax, laced as it is with all manner ofsoftening exceptions. And it finishes: No stu-dent of ecclesiastical discipline can fail toperceive that the obligation of fasting is rarelyobserved in its integrity nowadays.

Perhaps this isnt very surprising. Our faithhas a meal at its centre. Our instincts are com-munal and eating, as in Jewish tradition, is at its highest a ritual of sharing. Dieting,skimping, doing without, is a solitary act and MosleysHorizon programme with itsimages of lean American bodies, Americanscience and virtuoso fasters is flecked withPuritanism.

My 5:2 motives are partly about health andpartly narcissistic. I know I wont have an

athletes body again but Id like to come a littleclose to it. What I have begun to wonder (par-ticularly with my thoughts on Good Fridayin mind) is this: whether fasting can have thesame ascetic meaning today as it once did?What if fasting isnt particularly mortifying(as in the Catholic Encyclopaedia again training the soul to virtuous and holy living)?I dont have an easy answer. I do know thatthe hardest form of mortification for me isthe giving of my attention to someone whenI dont particularly feel like giving it of beingpresent, or (dread phrase) in the moment.For me a fasting day heightens this problemof attention with its longueurs worldlyequivalents of monasticisms noon-day devils that make me restless and edgy. Id ratherbe in the office, with other people, or in acinema, than have time hang heavy at home(from where I mostly work).

If Im pushed to a further point of honesty,Id admit that food is often for me a form ofdisplacement activity, a reason to postponesomething I really should do, be it a piece ofwriting or a difficult phone call. When I amanimated by something, I can spend manyhours on it, mindless of how little I may haveeaten. Food is a litmus test of my emotionallife; when Im eating too much, something is

wrong. Perhaps the 5:2, without my intendingit so, is pressing this strongly to the front ofmy mind. My fasting hasnt a scintilla of reli-gious intent about it, but without my meaningit to, it may be raising questions which beginto be religious.

6 | THE TABLET | 27 July 2013